Counseling Services

As a PhD student in MAINZ, you can take advantage of our counseling services.
Also as a former PhD Student in MAINZ, you can especially take advantage of our career coaching offer.

The MAINZ Counseling Services can bundle the individual offers to suit your personal needs.

Possible topics that are relevant for the doctorate phase include:

  • Work overload
  • Problems related to project and/or time management
  • Problems with self-motivation
  • Writing blocks
  • Challenges for your personal situation during the doctorate
  • Cultural challenges related to being an international student in Germany
  • Supervision at your workplace
  • Challenges resulting from difficult situations in your research team
  • Conflicts in your career-related Environment

Possible topics that are relevant for the final stages of the doctorate

  • Challenges related to the thesis defense
  • Career orientation
  • Job application check

For all of these topics, as well as any others, you are welcome to contact Katrin Klauer at any time. You can contact her either by email (best way) or by telephone from Monday to Wednesday.

Following the initial contact, a joint decision will be made about what the next steps could be:

  • The stimuli from the initial meeting might be enough for you, as a start.
  • Individual counseling might be the best option for you.
  • There might be an additional workshop, beyond those offered by MAINZ, that is relevant to your situation.
  • If you need help to resolve conflicts in your team, available options will be discussed jointly.
  • For problems related to depression, anxiety, or substance abuse, the MAINZ Counseling Service can serve as the starting point for contacting the psychological counseling centers at the universities in Mainz or Kaiserslautern.
  • And if you are concerned about career orientation towards the end of your doctorate, either a check of your applications or some career coaching might be helpful.

The support offered to you by MAINZ Counseling Service is free of charge.
The support is available for up to 6 months after you have graduated. MAINZ alumni who would like to use the Counseling Services beyond this point should contact Katrin Klauer.

The contents of the counseling and/or coaching sessions, as well as support in conflict situations, will be treated with the strictest confidentiality by all persons involved.

Individual Coaching

Coaching is a resource-oriented form of support that provides help when personal deliberations and conversations with friends have reached their limits.

Your coach is available to you, in the role of a professional sparring partner, for a restricted period of time. The joint effort focuses on what you yourself can influence. The goal is to help you to recognize your own, personal resources and to use them to their full extent. If you can define your options for action and can mobilize your potential for finding personal solutions, you will then be able to develop your own concrete alternatives to deal with the situation. You make your own, individual, personal decisions. In this process, your coach prompts you to think about questions that come from an external perspective. You find the solutions.

The coaching process is always customized. It consists of 3 to 6 sessions that each last for 60 or 90 minutes and covers a time span of 3 to 6 months.

Coaching sessions are conducted by Katrin Klauer. She is a systemic coach who has worked, as an independent counselor, with executives from a variety of commercial sectors and with academics since 2003.

Support in Conflict Situations

In very many cases, the relationship between PhD students and their supervisors is trusting and positive. This makes it possible for both sides to work in a result-oriented fashion.

In the few situations for which this is not the case, considerable problems may arise.
The dependence of PhD students on their supervisors often makes communication very difficult for both parties. Not talking can introduce a lot of tension into the situation and this usually disrupts communication altogether. This can, quite often, affect the atmosphere in the entire team.

External assistance aimed at clarification in such situations, which are characterized by irritations, misunderstandings, and conflicts, is necessary and can provide relief. However, this assistance cannot ensure that everything will be resolved. Nevertheless, non-partisan mediation can reduce tensions and open up the conflict for discussion, which can lead to the creation of realistic agreements. This is usually very helpful.

Get in touch with Katrin Klauer. The next step can be discussed either on the telephone or at a personal meeting.

This offer is available to PhD students as well as to supervisors at the MAINZ Graduate School.